Volume 30 (2011) - Cincinnati Romance Review

“DOUBLE CONSCIOUSNESS/DOUBLE BIND” 75
The poet-speaker ends the poem with the most violent act of men against women: that
of the physical violation of women.
Hoy, quiero ser un hombre. Subir por las tapias,
burlar los conventos, ser todo un Don Juan;
raptar a Sor Carmen y a Sor Josefina,
rendirlas, y a Julia de Burgos violar. (26)
Julia de Burgos satirizes one of the most powerful figures in Spanish literature,
that of El Quijote. The tone is burlesque and clearly mocks the sexual prowess of men.
The poet-speaker ends with the violation of author Julia de Burgos. By inserting herself
in the text, she rewrites literary history and subverts and dismantles the power of men.
Through the literary tropes of subversion and satire, de Burgos found a subtle way to be
voiced. Clearly, it is only through poetry and writing that women can achieve revenge.
“Ay, ay, ay de la grifa negra” displays a mulata consciousness and treats the
question of race and gender. Julia de Burgos writes both within the negrista tradition and
against it by conforming to and deconstructing national myths about blacks. The poem
commences,
Ay, ay, ay, que soy grifa y pura negra;
grifería en mi pelo, cafrería en mis labios;
y mi chata nariz mozambiquea. (32)
The first stanza is reminiscent of negrista literature dominated by white writers
who characterized blacks stereotypically as big-lipped. Even some black writers utilized
stereotypical caricatures to portray blacks as evidenced in the above cited poem and in
Nicolás Guillén’s “Negro bembón” which satirizes a big-lipped black man who lives off
the hard work of others. However, in “Ay, ay, ay de la grifa negra” the burlesque tone
changes in the third stanza of the poem and chastises the slave masters for their lack of
moral and social conscious:
Dícenme que mi abuelo fue el esclavo
por quien el amo dio treinta monedas.
Ay, ay, ay, que el esclavo fue mi abuelo
es mi pena, es mi pena.
Si hubiera sido el amo,
sería mi vergüenza;
que en los hombres, igual que en las naciones,
si el ser el siervo es no tener derechos,
el ser el amo es no tener conciencia. (32)
Cincinnati Romance Review 30 (Winter 2011): 69-82.